Thanks for the comments y'all. I feel like I've been improving my painting a lot over the last month or so. As Jevenkha points out I've actually been experimenting with a couple of different new ways of painting more lively flesh-tones. Seems to have payed off nicely!
@Dr. The viking: I occasionally play in FROB in Aarhus. We are currently running a short SoBH campaign.
Speaking of which - We had a game last night, and I made sure to take a LOT of nice pictures. Unfortunately I had set the shutter-time on the camera wrong, so all of them turned out extremely blurry. The following pictures, therefore, are reconstructions, done today using my own terrain at home.
And so, without further ado:
***
Deep within the valley...The three warbands had reached the center of the forest at the excact same time. However, what they saw there had caused all of them to freeze in their tracks. It certainly was here that the magical energy emanated from; the faint glow from the hill in the middle of the clearing, and the humming in the air, confirmed that. What caused the warbands to pause, and not just rush to the hill, was the bigger-than-avarage mountain troll that had gotten there first. It growled a low and rumbling sound as it looked around, trying to figure out what and who to eat first.
It was the ever pious Ann that grabbed the initiative. Holding aloft The Holy Scriptures, she shouted for the rest of her band of adventurers to advance. 
In SoBH, you dice with between 1 and 3 d6 against the models Q value. Each succes nets an action. Fail badly enough and play passes to the opponent, much akin to how in Bloodbowl you can fumble so badly it causes a turnover. This gives some very tense moments, as you have to carefully consider if you really need to roll that extra dice, or if it is better to play it safe.
One of the primary new mechanics in Fightin' Fungi (Though there are a great deal of smaller tweaks that, in my humble opinion, makes the game feel very fresh. And the original SoBH was one of the 'freshest' games I knew of!) is Reactions: This means that every time you botch a Q roll for activation, the opponent gets to try and react. Turn-overs on the other hand have become more rare. This gives (at least from what I could glean from this game) some very deep tactical play, and makes it so both players are involved more of the time. The reaction system especially combines well with the refurbished magic system for some awesome possibilities – Like a mage roasting a would-be attacker with magical thunder.
The first turn saw the warbands shuffling into position. Sir Aldous the Younger, of the adventurers, unfortunately poked his head a bit too far out, and the troll immediately charged in, the gleam of the noblemans fancy armour no doubt drawing its attention.
Roaring fiercely, the troll lumbered towards the young Aldous. Gripping his blade firmly, he ducked under the beasts clumsy swing, and, using its own momentum against it, stabbed at its stomach. This caught the beast by surprise, though the wound was quickly knitting close again. Hycis, the elven wardancer, however, saw this opening and dashed forward. Plunging her blades through the back of the beasts neck, she quickly and skillfully decapitated it. The troll fell to the ground with a loud thud and the adventurers roared in victory. At this point, some lucky rolling (The young Sir Aldous quite heroically knocking the charging troll down) followed up with an aggressive play by the wardancer led to the troll going down without causing any serious amount of trouble. It had, however, allowed the Town Guard to move into position, and they now stood ready to attack the adventurers.
Again, Hycis proved her worth. Having hidden behind a small copse of pine trees, she managed to catch a handgunner by surprise (claiming an Ambush bonus) and in a gruesome flurry of blades reduced the poor sod to a red mist. So gruesome was the lads death, in fact, that the Town Guard immediately reconsidered their plan of attack, and fell back a bit to a nearby hill.
The gruesome kill is often a game changer in SoBH, since fighters are likely to bolt if they are too close to it. This can screw up a warbands positioning, or straigth up drive them off. In this game however, it turned out to the Town Guards advantage in the end, as it allowed them some breathing room to reconsider their approach.
(The knight was at the forefront of the retreat, making sure to put a few commoner bodies between his noble hide and the fearsome wardancer)
While all of this had happened, Akatosh the Lich had been bidding his time and collecting a couple of scraps of loot. He now made his move. While directing his skeletons forward, the lich strode to the top of the hill and channeled dark magic. Assailing Aldous with a fear spell, the young nobleman again proved his worth as he shrugged off the spell-induced dread and immediately charged up the hill towards the lich.I had gambled that a Power 2 Fear would be enough to send the out of position Q 4+ Aldous running, thus allowing me to outnumber the rest of the adventurers. This was not to be, though, as the nobleman resisted the spell without breaking a sweat, and then proceeded to move up to threaten Akatosh. Luckily, I got a chance to get him out of there when the Town Guard fluked an activation later on.
A lucky roll while activating my ogre (2 successes on a Q 4+ ogre with 2 dice) allowed me to lock Ann, the paladin Champion of the adventurers, in combat, and I then continued to isolate her further by using a skeleton to block off her allies. This move payed off when I got another lucky activation roll on the Ogre later on, who proceeded to pummel the paladin into the ground with a power attack.
The only problem was that while I had been fighting the adventurers, the Town Guard had moved a LOT of troops onto the hill.
A particularly nasty knight-charge (as he finally found his killing face, and stopped fluking his activations) vaporized a poor skeleton and proceeded to threaten the lich.
When the knight then proceeded to grab 2 actions on a reaction roll, I thought Akatosh was done for. This was not to be, though, as the knight quite clearly remembered what Hycis had done to the poor handgunner earlier, and grabbed the opportunity to charge her instead. Elven dexterity and reflexes, however, once again proved their worth, as Hycis backflipped out of the way of the charging knight, and countered by knocking him down in return (Due to the way cool Evade and Counter trait)
With the knight vulnerable I saw an opportunity to rid myself of this troublesome character, and tried to pile in my two remaining skeletons to finish him off quickly. This was not to be, as the skeletons demonstrated why relying on literal boneheads for underlings tend to be a bad idea (the Ogre being quite thick as well) – I needed two actions on 3 dice on Q 3+ and had two shots at getting them. Both only got a single succes. Sigh; such are the hardships of a lich. Quality minions are few and far between.
I got a chance with a reaction roll later that turn, rolling two dice for activating the now base-to-base skeleton and hoping for a power attack. He only got a single action, and, what was worse, rolled atrociously low on his attack dice, resulting in the knight turning the poor thing into bonemeal.
Meanwhile, Hycis had danced off, and now tried to assault another of the Town Guard, no doubt hoping to clear them off of the hill. This guy was made of sterner stuff than the handgunner and knight though, and bashed the elf with the hilt of his Halberd. Hycis had finally failed a Roll with the Punches roll (another pretty cool skill, which however seems VERY strong together with Evade and Counter. But then again, the combo is flavourful and expensive. It was strong in this game, but not insurmountably so. I like that there are a lot of different ways to make interesting fighters of various kinds with the Traits. Especially a proper evasion/dexterity fighter type, like the wardancer.)
With Hycis being knocked down, it was a simply job to finish the job when the Town Guards next activation rolled around. The halberd came down and the elf was no more, this coincidentally being the breaking point of the adventurers (Sly Seagal had taken some lightning from the Lich to the face earlier) and Aldous spirit finally broke. He ran off, but, much to the chagrin of every one else involved, he took with him a considerable haul of treasure.
The final act of the game was when a Town Guard despatched the lich, who failed to regenerate. At this point, most of the Lich's retinue and the adventurer-warband (except one very dour and steadfast dwarf with a crossbow, holed up in some ruins) had either run off, crumpled or otherwise got themselves mangled, and the Town Guard firmly held the hill – Allowing them to investigate the strange magic flowing from it.
Striding towards the ancient skeletal form, the Guard started mouthing a prayer. He could see that the being was trying to channel some sort of spell, and knew that he had only little time to act. Raising his halberd, he shouted the last words of the prayer: “...In the name of the Seven Sons of the Sun!” At this, he brought his weapon crashing down, cleaving straight through the skull of the Lich. With a shrill scream its form trembled and then exploded, showering bone fragments over a large area. A black tendril rose from where the creature had stood a moment ago and drifted away on the wind, leaving behind only a whispered curse.
It was over – The grim resolution, steel and faith of the town guard had carried the day.
***
That certainly was a lot of fun! So far, I am very impressed with the additions of the Fightin' Fungi rules, but then again – I always was a sucker for Song of Blades and Heroes.
My only concern is with the reaction system. I really like the depth it adds to the game, though the constant ping-pong between players can be a bit draining – Especially during the later stages of the game. Then again – This was a 3 player game, and thus played a bit longer than a regular game of FF/SoBH would (about 1 ½ hour I think), even though the forces where only 250 points per side.
That raises my other concern: Strictly speaking, the rules do not allow for 3 players – something regular SoBH does with a charm (The only oddity I've encountered being shooting into combats, which can be resolved with a bit of common sense, or just not allowed).
We solved this by saying that reactions go to the nearest player, though I am not entirely sure this is the best way to handle it. It did keep the reactions relevant and sensible (no across-the-board skeletons reacting to a town guard firing upon an adventurer, etc), but it also meant that there where prolonged periods of the third player not being in on the game – Two player turns, each with the other player reacting for each move the active player makes, is the worst case scenario.
Still, I've not played nearly enough games to really comment on this.
The magic system is a blast! I can't wait to try out more of the different spells. I think the power level sits in a really great spot – Allowing for the mages to have an effect on the game, sometimes very powerful, but not disproportionately so.
I did miss some more supporting spells, though – A parallel to the Clerics Lay On Hands of regular SoBH, or similar heals and enhancements. Though I am not sure this is entirely necessary; it might just add more bloat, as the Lay On Hands was rarely really relevant. Still, some more support spells would be cool.
I had given a lot of troops armour and shields, but it didn't really come up in the game. On paper I really like the system, but I think I can count on one hand the number of times that Heavy Armor has had an effect during all of my games. Then again, I can see situations where it can be very clutch – Like when knocked down, the opponent suddenly needs an even higher score to beat you. I also do like that Heavily Armored troops are not immortal, like in some other rules systems.
On the other hand I am not so sure as to the built-in movement reduction of the various armour traits. In regular SoBH, you could just add on the movement reduction by adding the trait “short move”. In FF it is build into the Heavily Armored trait. This does restrict the different types of heavy infantry possible to build – and makes it weird to stat dwarven heavy infantry (Do they use 2 actions to make 1 move, because they regularly move short? Else – Only their third move gets affected by the armours movement penalty, which is rarely relevant, making the penalty a bit weird. This might be entirely intentional, though.)
I am sure I could think of more stuff to say, but I think this post is already waaay too long, and besides, I'd propably need to play a couple more games.
I will finish by saying that the game was great fun (so agreed all parts), played very smoothly, and that I really really really enjoy all of the flavourful special rules. You can make so many different character-types that it is baffling. I am eager to try out Flurry of Fists and Shield Rush.
Cheers, and thanks for reading!
~Affun
August 26, 2012, 07:46:48 AM
